


We're Not the Same

by valzilla



Category: South Park
Genre: F/M, M/M, Season 21 Episode 10, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 22:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12945564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valzilla/pseuds/valzilla
Summary: On the search for Ike, Heidi realized a few things along the way.Whether or not she could blame Craig and Tweek for it, she wasn't sure.





	We're Not the Same

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so I loved the season finale but I think we can all agree that there was an obvious reason Craig and Tweek had joined the gang instead of any other characters and I'm sure we could all see the parallels between Heidi/Eric and Craig/Tweek when it came to the toxicity of relationships. So, I decided to write my ideal in terms of Heidi/Creek interactions.
> 
> I hope you all like it, and find at least some satisfaction in seeing Craig and Tweek help Heidi out whether she acknowledges it or not.

Heidi scoffed as she and Eric walked through the woods, trailing ever so slightly behind the rest of the group.

Eric shouted at her, his hands forming tight fists while his face grew red. His expression was scrunched up, a disgusting appearance to add to his already disgusting personality. But it was nothing she hadn’t already seen before.

She shouted in return. She could barely remember what she was even responding to. It all sounded the same to her. She assumed it did to him too. But those were the motions, the awful parts of relationships that everyone went through if they wanted to maintain the pleasantries as well. Her voice was shrill and it hurt her throat to yell but how else was she going to get her point across to her boyfriend?

Eric threw his hands to the side as if motioning for something larger. She wasn’t sure what he was referencing, but their yelling frustrated her and she just wanted to stop. But she couldn’t. Afterall, it was her turn to win an argument.

“You know what, Heidi? I don’t need to take this!” He turned to the group and called to Stan and Kyle. “Guys! Stop for a moment I need to piss!”

Stan groaned. “Now?”

Kyle joined him. “C’mon, Cartman! We can’t stop until we find Ike!”

Kyle’s words were lost to Eric as he had already headed to a more private area of the woods to finish his aforementioned business. Heidi, on the other hand, was left alone, yelling for him to hurry up so that they would finish their crummy mission sooner than later. She sat on a log as they waiting for him.

Sighing, she stared at nothing as the seconds passed by like hours. How long did it even take someone to pee?

She glanced to her left when she noticed Tweek sit next to her.

“Where’s your boyfriend, Twink?” She snorted at his expression. “I thought you guys couldn’t stop holding hands or else you two would die.”

It wasn’t hard to tell Tweek was uncomfortable. Why he stayed with her on the log was beyond her understanding.

“C-Craig is over with Stan and Kyle. He’s figuring out what our theme music should be.” He twiddled with the skin of his nails while his right leg jittered up and down. It was annoying.

“And I needed to know that, why?” God damn it, why did Eric have to pee for so long?

“N-No reason! I just, you asked, and I, um, I just…”

“We don’t have all day.”

“I just… I just wanted to say that what you did at the bridge when you stopped yourself from, um, going all the way back when you threw your phone was really brave.” Well, that was new information to her.

He continued, slightly more confident in his words. “It, it takes a lot to know that theres things out there for you to look forward to and I think that with everything you’ve been through, you’ve been really brave.” 

She cast her gaze downwards. “Thanks.” For such a spaz, maybe he wasn’t such an annoyance as she assumed he was.

“A-And!”

She turned to him.

“A-And, I, um, I don’t think Cartman should’ve talked to you the way he did a little bit ago.”

“Hey! Don’t talk shit about Eric that way!” She pointed her finger at him, poking his chest harshly.

Tweek yelped. “I-I’m not! I just, just wanted to say that he should’ve taken you seriously!” His face provoked empathy. “It sounded like a hard time for you and I don’t think Cartman did the right thing by not letting you talk.”

Heidi sneered. “You say that as if your own relationship isn’t like that. Craig clearly wouldn’t hesitate to beat your ass in two seconds if you spoke out of line.” She noticed Eric returning from a distance. She rested on his palms as she spoke, leaning back. “Every relationship has someone in charge. Just because you let Craig take lead and whip you into shape doesn’t mean I can’t fight Eric for that spot, too.”

Tweek tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

Before Heidi could answer, Eric returned with a face of relief. “Alright, got my shit done. Let’s get this over with.” He grabbed Heidi’s wrist and lifted her off the log to get them to start walking. 

She ripped his hand off of her. “Don’t just grab me like that, you dumbass!”

She and Eric returned to their routine arguments but from the corner of her eye, she noticed Craig walk up to Tweek and offer his hand to him. Tweek had grabbed it with a small smile and blush. 

Heidi laughed in her head. They could act happy and cheerful, but she knew that one mess up and their true colors would show. They weren’t any different than Eric and herself. They were the same.

As they walked towards the middle of the group, Heidi stuck out her leg.

She watched as Tweek stumbled. But before he could hit the ground, Craig caught him. Eric was yelling in her ear and she could barely hear their words, but when Craig gently grabbed Tweek’s hand again and then pushed his hair back to kiss his forehead, Heidi was left fuming.

She pointed to the couple, now ahead of them. “Why can’t you hold my hand like that!?”

Eric stared at the two before responding in kind. “Because I’m not fucking gay, Heidi!”

…

Stan and Kyle busied themselves with attempting to come up with a map to Ike. As impossible as it was, Tweek insisted on helping the pair out. It left Craig, Heidi, and Eric with little to nothing to do.

As Heidi stood by, tapping her foot to the ground, she watched Craig scroll through his Pandora playlist for a new song to play. Getting a little closer, she noticed that over half of them were love songs from before either of them were born. Cheesy.

“So,” Craig spoke, “Cartman tried to kill you by dressing you up as Gretel to let a witch kidnap you, huh.” 

She wasn’t sure if it was his voice or his tone, but either way, she was already mad at Eric enough that there were some feelings left over to share. “So!? He still took me out and spent time with me! As if you ever go out with your spaz of a boyfriend when you’re out in public.”

Craig whipped his head to her. “Don’t call him a spaz.” He returned to his phone. “... I don’t know what kind of relationship you and Cartman have, but when I take Tweek out somewhere, I take him to amusement parks and restaurants and museums. Not to a dark, forgotten park of the woods without anyone to contact if something bad happens.” He turned off his phone, letting the soft tune of a love song play in the background of their conversation. “And I know that if Tweek took too long getting ready and ended up making us late to a pumpkin patch, I wouldn’t use that as an excuse to kill him.”

Heidi stared at Craig.

“But that’s just my own personal judgment.”

She bit her tongue before talking. “But what about all of his shitty anxieties and paranoia and all that dumb shit? You said he had a panic attack before we came here.” She knew that people always had a breaking point. Craig had to have one the way that Eric and she did.

“It’s not dumb shit to me.” He shoved his hands in his pocket. “I care about him and if he gets scared, I’m learning how to help him out. Sometimes that means talking and sometimes that means blankets and hugs. I’d rather help calm him down and see him smile again than I would let him suffer and figure it out on his own.

“Sounds gay.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I am.”

Tweek ran up to them. Well, Craig, with a smile on his face. “We think we might know how to get to Ike! Theres these tiny dog tracks I found and Kyle thinks he’s seen them before.”

“That’s great, sunshine. I’m proud of you.” His expression was unimpressed but his tone dripped with adoration.

Tweek beamed with a smile as he grabbed Craig’s hand and began to lead him towards the dog prints.

She heard them talk as she trailed behind them to get a look at the prints too.

“Your thermos sounds empty, babe. You run out of coffee?”

“Y-Yeah, but it’s ok! We should be finishing soon, anyway.”

“I can go get some for you.”

“What!? Craig! We’re in the middle of the woods and it took two hours just to get to the bridge!”

“Yeah. So do you want coffee or not because I can just go and get some more for you.”

Tweek laughed and giggled, nudging Craig with his shoulder. They seemed happy, and Heidi would have been willing to call bullshit to Craig’s claim if she hadn’t watched him pull a bottle out of his backpack and pour what appeared to be coffee into Tweek’s thermos. 

Never had Eric been considerate before. If he did something for her, it was because both of them wanted it. His actions benefited him first, her second.

As if she wanted to prove them wrong, to prove to herself that Eric was kind, she walked to him. Neither Craig nor Tweek were paying attention to Heidi, lost in their own little world as Tweek whispered things into Craig's ear and caused him to chortle and blush. She wasn’t sure what frustrated her more: that Tweek thought Craig’s weird laugh was cute or that Craig kept glancing at Tweek with a love Heidi couldn’t remember Eric ever having.

Sighing, she grabbed Eric’s sleeve. It seemed to work when Tweek did it to Craig. Of course, his grip seemed softer and his voice was much more considerate compared to her testy tone. Well, to each their own. “Eric, I’m thirsty.”

He snorted in response, laughing. “When aren’t you?”

She glared at him. “Didn’t you pack a couple of juice boxes?” She’d seen him drink more than a few boxes before he’d ditched her to go to the bathroom in the woods. “Just share one with me.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Yeah, you do!”

“What? I said I don’t fucking have any, bitch!”

“Don’t call me a bitch, you dick!”

This was getting nowhere and only seemed to prove Heidi wrong the more they talked. She groaned and ripped Eric’s backpack off of his back, throwing it to the ground and hastily unzipping it. Inside of the backpack were snacks and drinks galore. 

She grabbed a juice box for herself and glared at Eric. He seemed to shrink when she did. “So, you didn’t have any left, huh?”

“No.” He crossed his arms and looked the other direction. “I don’t know how those got there!”

Heidi sighed, grumbling to herself as she chewed on the straw of the juice box. It was grape. She hated grape.

…

Ike rode the dog the entire time. Heidi had no clue where he’d been able to find both his pet and the Mountie outfit, but stranger things have happened and she was in no position to ask the kindergartener anything.

Instead, she focused her eyes on what was in front of her. 

Kyle seemed busy chatting with Ike, Stan on the other side as he listened in on the conversation between the adoptive siblings.

Then there was Craig and Tweek, they’d seemed to have transitioned from hand-holding to Craig wrapping his arm around Tweek’s waist. They didn’t speak. But it didn’t seem like they had to. 

She looked down at her hand. She’d intertwined it with Eric a while ago, her own mitten had grown damp with sweat. Whether it was her’s or Eric’s she didn’t know. But she did know that it was beginning to feel disgusting. She dropped her hand and wiped it against her jacket. Eric didn’t notice.

Arriving at the front of the town’s gymnasium, everyone appeared shocked at the appearance of the newest cryptid. In between sighs of relief from the parents who had been worried sick and the murmuring of the police towards what steps should be taken to prevent this occurring again, Mr. White had grabbed a gun. Heidi wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it from, or to who the gun actually belonged to, but she rushed to the sidewalk to get out of harm’s way.

As Jason’s father ranted, pointing the gun in every direction possible, Heidi looked at where ever he pointed.

Jason, his mother, and sister all appeared frightened at the anger Mr. White expressed. The parents of the town held tightly onto their children. Garrison was silent, aside from occasional words muffled by the cover on his mouth. Kyle was standing in front of Ike, protecting him as best he could while Stan stood next to him. His arm was out, slightly covering Kyle’s orange jacket as if he was ready to defend Kyle the way Kyle was with Ike.

Heidi focused on Craig more than she did anyone else. He stood in front of Tweek, his arms out. For the first time ever, Heidi noticed his expression was anything but neutral. He appeared angry, on the defensive as if he were the most solid barrier between Tweek and the possibility of a bullet. This time, Heidi didn’t scoff. 

Craig appeared genuine in his actions. He truly cared for Tweek, and Heidi could admit that before that before today she assumed that Craig didn’t care for anything. Tweek seemed calmer with Craig around. Before today, Tweek could barely speak a single sentence to Heidi before either freaking out or mumbling out something incoherent. They bettered each other. They helped each other directly or otherwise in becoming better people.

Heidi looked over her shoulder.

Eric was behind her, trembling with fear. He looked at the gun and Heidi swore she could feel the hands on her back push her forward ever so slightly. 

He didn’t improve her.

He never did anything for her.

His emotions were always more important.

His visions, his goals, and ambitions. The clothing he wore, the food he ate, the time he spent with his friends, the dates they went on, how he treated her, the way he spoke to her! Everything he did was for his benefit! Every word that came out of his disgusting mouth was against her! She had become a pawn in his game! She bad mouthed Kyle, a boy who genuinely cared for her, for the sake of making Eric happy.

Eric convinced her that his happiness was first.

Never her’s.

Heidi looked at the gun in Mr. White’s hand again. 

She knew what she needed to do.


End file.
